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Engels Today pp 95–127Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Condition of the Working Class in England: 150 Years On

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Abstract

Engels collected his research material for The Condition of the Working Class in England between 1842 and 1844 while working in the family firm of Ermen and Engels. On returning to Barmen in the autumn of 1844 Engels wrote to Marx in November of the same year that he was ‘buried up to my neck in newspapers and books from which I am compiling my book on the condition of the English proletarians’ (CW, Vol. 4, p. 701). The book was first published in Germany in June 1845 and ‘in socialist circles it was received with great approval’ (ibid.). Reviews of the text not only commented on Engels’s condemnation of the oppression he had witnessed in British capitalist society, they also referred to the ‘feeling of hope and faith’ (ibid.) Engels conveyed. For many workers, it was the first time they had been aware of the possibility of a working-class movement. However, the ‘revolutionary conclusions’ within the text were deplored by bourgeois critics — even though they acknowledged the accuracy of Engels’s observations. The German economist Hildebrand argued that Engels’s ‘characterization of English bourgeois society’ was ‘true in detail but incorrect as a whole’ (CW, Vol. 4, p. 702).

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Authors
  1. Anne Dennehy
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sussex, UK

    Christopher J. Arthur (Honorary Lecturer in Philosophy) (Honorary Lecturer in Philosophy)

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© 1996 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Dennehy, A. (1996). The Condition of the Working Class in England: 150 Years On. In: Arthur, C.J. (eds) Engels Today. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24871-1_5

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